Angel Wings Stained with Shadowed Blood
by Lavender Flame
Summary: In sixteenth-century Britain, wizard's magic exists only in storybooks, but that of love still abounds. James Potter's high-society parents want him to marry someone respectable and have a child heir, so provide him with a list of "suitable options". At a family party, he meets one of his choices, Lily Evans, and they set off on the rocky path of love.


**Author's Note: This will be written first and foremost for Forever Siriusly Sirius' "Muggle!AU 16****th****, 17****th****, or 18****th**** Century British Forced Marriage Challenge", but also for Fire the Canon's "Multi-Chapter Boot Camp Challenge" (Chapter One prompt: countryside) and "Prove Me Wrong Challenge". A huge thank you to CrystalIceLover and Team Edward Rules All of Project Team Beta for editing!**

* * *

_Angel Wings Stained with Shadowed Blood__—Chapter One: Meet _

Esmond Potter became rich during the hunt for a new trade route by sea, when he discovered a channel and sold the map, revealing its location for nearly half the sterling in the kingdom. "Our son shall be silk-stocking," he told his wife, and in roughly ten months time, that son was born.

James Potter was an only child and his parents feared they were not long for the world, so they became attached to the idea of spending every moment possible with him. He was easy to love, with wide, curious hazel eyes that always darted around, and within the next fifteen years they were always covered with spectacles. The lad was practically blind without them, and so they were glad that he was one of the first they knew to have such eyewear.

Right from the day he was born, admirers surrounded him. It started to go to his head by the time he was four. He grew somewhat haughty and domineering, but he was handsome and intelligent and mischievously charming, so most overlooked it.

One of the servants attempted to take him outside to show him life outside of the manor's stone walls—rotten food and feces lying wherever on the ground, diseased beggars everywhere. That particular servant was eventually beheaded.

But James' memory of that lecture lived on. He tried not to think of it much. Everyone got what they deserved eventually, right? And so he had to live up to what he had here—this manor house and his noble place in the world. It was important that he married and had a child heir, and it was important that it all be done in the good, proper way his parents planned out to every last minutiae.

Yet it didn't _quite _happen in that way.

* * *

_Autumn, 1524_

James examined himself in the oval mirror and adjusted his linen shirt, best doublet jacket, hose, fur-lined over-gown. His hair still stuck up everywhere. "You have to fix it for tonight, mate. There'll be _girls_ there," Sirius chided from behind him.

"Have you been tippling, Siri?" came a quiet voice from the settee; Remus.

"Have _you_? You've been following my little second cousin around fancy a puppy dog all day. _No pun intended._" Meanwhile, James tried to flatten his hair; it only mussed it more, and his glasses started slipping off his nose, lopsided. He gave the mirror a black look and fixed his glasses. His hair, on the other hand, seemed irreparable.

There came a call from downstairs, his mother: "—James! _James!_ James Potter, you're going to be late to the gathering! Come along, now!"

"S'ppose we should go downstairs," mumbled Remus, clearly glad for a change of subject. He stood, dusting off his hose.

"Aye—Canis, get a move on already." Sirius prodded the black Rottweiler at his feet with one shoe. "C'mon, now." The dog stretched to move upright and followed the boys out of the room.

"Eighteen years and you still haven't found your betrothed," Sirius continued to James. "This could be the night, mate. This could be—Canis! Stop sniffing the drapes!—the night."

"Remus' night, more like."

"Or yours." James elbowed him. "What was her name? _Katherine?_"

"Oh, shush up, James."

They reached the end of the hall, came to a wide set of doors, where James's mother waited. "Sirius, Remus, loves, could you go around through the parlour, please? James has to make his grand entrance."

"Of course, Ms. Potter," said Remus, and tugged Sirius in the direction of the parlour door.

"Lovely; but, it's Elizabeth, _really_," she called after them, and then examined her son, made one more attempt at fixing his hair.

"Mother," he said. "It's useless."

"I know, I know. Come, you have guests to meet." She opened one of the doors and brought him out onto the top of a staircase, calling the ballroom to attention. "Visitants, I give you your 'host of honor', my good son, James Potter." There was applause. James smiled a bit awkwardly and scanned the crowd for Sirius and Remus, who were still right near the parlour entrance. Katherine and Nymphadora had joined them, and Canis the dog looked half asleep already.

"Go on," James' mother urged, and he walked down the staircase, trying not to move too quickly. It took several minutes for him to reach his mates, having to weave through the sea of people who wanted to talk to him. Not that he could blame them. _Hello, Ms. Rawnsley, how's the baby? Mr. Bristol, you look superb. Yes, yes, enjoy yourself…._

"James! Thought we lost you, mate," Sirius said to him.

"Not yet," he answered.

"Wotcher, James."

"Wotcher, Tonks."

"Hello, James," said Katherine (Greene, lived up on the hill to the east, always a favorite lookout place of his mother's…). "Where've you been?"

"Hello. And nowhere, really." Remus only nodded; James nodded back. It occurred to him that they all acted as though he had been gone for several years. In reality, it had been… ten minutes? Nine? No, maybe ten, the Beck children never talked for less than five….

"What _is_ the occasion for today, again?" asked Katherine.

"Don't know, really. Meet and greet?" He was supposed to meet some of his options for suitable "companions" at the party, but he didn't exactly feel so ready to get into the marriage deal yet. And some of the options were out of the question altogether if he didn't want his mates to kill him—Tonks, Katherine—and some were out of the question for the sake of his sanity, like Mary Beck. There were others he didn't really know yet. For tonight, though, he felt the happiest here, with familiarity and memory.

"Your upholstery is lovely, by the way. Who was your upholder?"

"Err… Mr. Batiste, I think?"

"Ooh, I think my mum's gotten some of his things lately," Tonks said. "Remus, did you notice any the last time you were in the parlour—?"

"Not particularly—"

"—Canis_, no!_' Sirius pulled the dog away from another settee, and everyone whipped around to watch him. Mid-turn, James saw someone slipping out the door towards the back veranda, and his first thought was that if they were leaving, his mother would kill him for letting them go without a goodbye, so early, too. They weren't even wearing a jacket and so would likely be about to freeze to death no matter what James' mother did to him.

"I'll be back," he said quickly, and started to work his way through the crowd again. He slipped out the same door, and closed it more securely than the first person. The same "first person" faced away from him, gripping the fencing of the veranda, and wore a fitted, floor-length frock with long sleeves. Still, she shivered.

"Fancy yourself suicidal or something?" he called over to her. "It's freezing out here."

At first she jumped a bit, startled, but answered several seconds later: "There's a duckling in the lake that doesn't know how to swim."

"I'm sorry?"

"There's a duckling in the lake that doesn't know how to swim. I think it's sick."

He looked out; in the moonlight, he could see one duck lagging behind the others, flailing in circles. "Yes, there is."

She still wasn't looking at him—all he could really see of her was the frock and dark red tresses. "Will you _do_ something about it?"

"About the duck?"

"Yes," she said, irritated.

"Are you mad? It's in the middle of the lake; I'd die of pneumonia."

"How tragic that would be. Imagine it: James Potter found dead trying to rescue a baby duck mutated because of the lack of attention paid to his family's lake."

"I'm sorry?"

"You could've at least taken it inside and not let it eat something diseased or whatever it did."

"I didn't notice there were ducklings."

"That's the point." Then she whipped around, and stared him down with disturbingly bright green eyes. She looked familiar, from somewhere. She stopped looking at him again, and mumbled, "Severus would've taken him in the house."

James couldn't hide his immediate contempt. "Snivellus? _You _know _Snivellus_? I didn't know he talked to girls."

"He _does_ have a name, you know."

"Nobody _uses _it."

"_I _do."

"Good for you, then."

"You're really not going to do anything about the duck?"

"What am I _supposed _to do? It's a duck."

"_I'll _get it, then." She moved away from the fencing for the first time and moved down the stairs, onto the ground, and he followed, still thinking _Mother's going to kill me _since he had ditched the party, running around in the mud in dress clothes, and letting whatever-her-name-was go after a baby duck. What was her plan, anyways?

"You're wearing a ball gown," he pointed out to her. "They're rather hard to swim in."

"I don't plan on swimming."

"Then what—?" He stopped, seeing that she had spotted the old, beat-up boat he and Sirius and Remus had made years ago. _Years_ ago; he wasn't sure it was safe. She had already moved; he followed, a bit faster. "I really don't think that's a good idea—"

"And I suppose you have a better one?"

"You _are _a bit forward, aren't you?" Admittedly he was a bit out of breath—he'd never noticed how large of a lake it was before.

"I _have _been dragged to your parties since I was born, by my sister."

"Is your sister Petunia, by any chance?"

They'd reached the boat, and she'd stepped into it; the boards creaked. "What's it to you?"

"She's _nosy._" He'd climbed into the boat, too, facing her, and paused for a beat. "You don't look like her." (Although he was almost certain that the two were related by now, he'd convinced himself of it.)

There were four oarlocks and four oars on the boat; she grabbed the two on her side and started rowing, faster than he'd expected her to, almost throwing him off balance and out of the boat. He started rowing as fast as possible to make up for it, occasionally getting splashed with water—and it really was cold, the lake might've been nearing freezing.

They were approaching the duckling, which moved frantically away from them, or tried to. "I told you—this is a stupid idea!" He looked out at the water. "C'mere, little duck, c'mon, you can do it;" he talked like he did to Canis. The duck turned its head, but didn't move towards him otherwise, so he stretched over the side of the boat to pick it up (was it even safe for ducks to be out of water like that?)

An inch too far; the boat lurched and he was thrown out of it, with a surprised yelp, landing straight on top of the duckling, but quickly grabbing it and holding it out of the way as his head came back above the surface of the lake. The cold of the water hit him hard, and he dropped the duckling onto the floor of the boat. "J-j-just—go-o ba-a-ack," he got out, teeth chattering. "I-I'll tip it if—if I-I try to g-get ba-ack in."

He wasn't the best of swimmers, and he became convinced he had quickly started to freeze to death, so he flailed in the water alongside the boat as she rowed it back to the shore. James dragged himself out of the lake—it was a sharp drop-off, he'd learned—and shivered in the cold night air. Lily had put the boat back on the land, and sat next to him on the shore, holding the duckling. The lake water had splashed parts of her dress, but that was all; James, meanwhile, had become a shivering wreck on the ground.

"You poor little thing," she cooed, and James felt indignant when he realized the words were directed at the duckling and not at him. _All of that for nothing?_

"James! _James!_ James Potter!" His mother rushed over to where the two of them were, holding up her dress a bit, and one of the servants—Poppy—was right behind her. "What happened to you? How did you get soaking wet?" She looked at the girl sitting next to him. "And how did _you _end up holding that duck?"

"It was sick. We went out in the boat to get it out of the lake, but he fell overboard." She pointed to James, who had already being wrapped in a blanket by Poppy.

"And who are you?"

"Lily Evans, ma'am. It's good to meet you." She held out a hand; James' mother shook it, but made an immediate comment on how cold she was. "Let's get both of you inside, before you get ill."

* * *

Lily was given a dry jacket to wear and was fussed over by Poppy for a little while before she was sent back downstairs to the party. (It felt like it had been hours, but it hadn't been long at all.)

James, on the other hand, had to first discard all of his sopping wet clothes, dry off, and then put on dry ones, and be checked by Poppy for any signs of sickness and cleansed somewhat even though the lake couldn't have been _that _dirty. (It was much more looked after than Lily had thought, although it was true no one else had cared about the duck, which was now also in the good hands of a servant.) Then came the fussing and lecture from his mother, and they let him go back, too.

He didn't look for Lily; he went back to where his friends were waiting to tell them the story. They were all sitting at a table slightly away from the action of the party, wearied of them—Sirius, Remus, Katherine, Tonks.

"That's bloody brilliant!" said Sirius, upon their realization that Lily was on the list of suitable companions. "I can be your best man, can't I, mate?"

"She thinks I'm an insufferable varmint," James pointed out. "I don't think it's likely."

"Well," said Sirius, "she's still _fair_ game, eh?"

Katherine scowled at him, uncharacteristically. "What did you say her name was?"

"Lily, think it was."

"As in, the flower?"

"Better yet, her sister's 'Petunia'."

"Still ahead of me," said Tonks.

* * *

_Katherine, Mary Beck, Tonks, Lily. _

James did have a physical copy of the list, and tonight was the first time he actually wrote on it for himself, putting an "x" next to the first three, and a question mark next to the fourth.

A definite "question mark".


End file.
